September Conscious Choice

Abu-Ghraib Interrogator Turns Anti-War Activist
By Jessie Tierney

When he was only 17 years old, Iowa native Joshua Casteel enlisted in the U.S. Army Reserves. Hailing from a military family with an evangelical religious background, it seemed the right path for him. But after basic training, studying Arab linguistics, being deployed to Abu Ghraib in June of 2004 and interrogating prisoners, he found himself confronting a self-professed jihadist from Saudi Arabia.

“The entire time we spoke,” Casteel, now 27, explains, “he talked to me with a gentle calmness and evangelical tone. He tried to convert me to Islam from start to finish, and being an evangelical, I felt in familiar territory, as if I were speaking simply to my Muslim counterpart.”

When their conversation turned to war and violence, Casteel asked the prisoner why he came to Iraq to kill: the man’s response was to ask Casteel the same question. “At that point I knew I could go no further, unless I wanted to get into a debate about which one of us had the ‘more just’ cause.”

Very soon thereafter Casteel filed for conscientious objector status and was granted an honorable discharge on May 31. Since returning to his Midwestern home, he has been studying Nonfiction and Playwriting at the University of Iowa, combating post-traumatic stress with art.

Last February, he was in Chicago performing in Returns, a play he wrote which explores living with his memories of war in Abu Ghraib. It was staged at Columbia College, with an intimate audience and limited props — everything they used fit into a suitcase. The idea was that the play could travel easily and be performed in church basements, VFW halls, and schools. It will be staged again in November at Princeton’s McArthur Theater under the direction of David Gothard, of Ireland’s Abbey Theatre.

Casteel was also interviewed in Iraq For Sale, David Greenwald’s documentary on war profiteering, and is featured in a new documentary called Soldiers of Conscience, as an “ambassador of the Christian message.” On February 16, in an act of conscious civil disobedience, he was arrested at a sit-in organized by the Occupation Project. Later, while sitting in a jail cell with his friends, he joked, “If only my detainees could see me now.” Also in February, Casteel traveled to Rome and Assisi to speak with the pope, members of the curia, cardinals, and archbishops about the Just War doctrine and civil disobedience, where he proposed making more contact with individual Catholics about refusing to fight in an unjust war.

Now living in Grand Rapids, MI, while completing his thesis, Casteel says he is putting much of his focus into finishing his memoir and in publishing a collection of war correspondence, called Letters from Abu Ghraib. In it, Casteel writes, “I know who I am and where I am going by the act of remembering.” By making the realities he faced in the war real, he invites us to remember with him.Check out Soldiers of Conscience (socfilm.com) and Iraq for Sale (iraqforsale.org) and keep your eyes peeled for Letters from Abu Ghraib, due out in January 2008.— Jessie Tierney

Tang Center Carves Niche for Herbal Medicine in the Scientific World

By Jessie Tierney

The University of Chicago, internationally renowned for its hospitals and medical research, has opened the Tang Center, whose work is slowly carving a niche for herbal medicine in the normally dismissive scientific world.With one third of Americans using alternative therapies for ailments from hypertension to cancer, the research done at the Center could stand to change the way we look at — and regulate — herbal medicine.

The Tang Center, located in Hyde Park at U of C’s Medical Center, evaluates both benefits and risks of medicinal herbs through evidence-based research, and provides “unbiased information” to healthcare professionals and health-conscious consumers via their website. Both physicians and consumers can benefit from the research done at the Tang Center.

Dr. Chun-Su Yuan, director of the Center, stresses that “Consumers may think a herbal supplement is natural, but it still may interact with drugs or surgery.” A patient — or doctor — may not know, for example, that Ginseng stimulates the immune system and improves energy, but it can cause rapid heartbeat, high blood pressure, excessive bleeding and low blood sugar levels during surgery. Currently, there is no requirement to register dietary supplements with the FDA.

In addition to changing the minds of the fifty percent of doctors who don’t believe in herbal medicine, the Tang Center’s research is working to help the reputability of herbal medicines in the scientific world. However, to Americans who fear for their health freedom and prospective CODEX legislation — which, among other dictates, would limit the availability of herbal medicines to a prescription-only basis — this research may be a troubling step toward regulation.

Dr. Yuan says, “research done at the Tang Center will aid in the standardization and regulation of herbal medicines.” He clarifies that by standardization and regulation, he is referring to “the academic and scientific approach — not necessarily as outlined in the CODEX legislation,” which he explains is “a legal issue.” Funding for the Center comes from the Tang Foundation — an international donor that channels resources toward healthcare and education — as well as the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), a federal agency within the Department of Health & Human Services, which awards $120 million in CAM grants per year.

The Tang center’s website details background, uses, phytochemistry/pharmacology, safety, and preparations/dosage for a number of herbs and botanicals they have studied and tested so far, and continues to update as research presses onward.— Jessie Tierney

Hangin’ Ten Lakeside
By Jessie Tierney

Mark Urban of Orland Park learned to surf during his college years in Hawaii. “When I came back [to Chicago]” Urban explained, “I thought it was all over. I used to just dream about it.” He took a camping trip to Sleeping Bear Dunes and came upon some guys carrying surfboards. He reacted how most people do: “You can’t surf on a lake!” Now he’s in Lake Michigan year-round.

“We surf in 34 degree water and minus zero wind-chills,” he says, “we’re out there 365 days a year.”Chicago native Jim Hoop learned to surf off 57th Street beach in the ’80s with some life-guarding buddies. Though surfing off Chicago beaches is no longer legal, there are plenty of good spots from Evanston to Zion to “the freshwater surfing capital of the world” — Sheboygan, Wisconsin.

Hoop is now the co-director of the Eastern Surfing Association’s Great Lakes District (network54.com/Forum/406988), an organization with 219 members, that gathers vital information for lake surfers. He says that surfing the lakes is “friendly, unlike in the oceans, where nobody even looks at one another, we’re just the opposite. You see a guy on the street with a board on his roof and you go try to catch up with him. I’ve met a lot of guys like that.”

This winter while the rest of us are layering on scarves and gloves, Great Lakes surfers will be heading out in their wetsuits to ride some of the best waves of the season.“We come out,” says Hoop, “and there’s icicles on our faces. But you know, that’s what we like to do.”